Bennie travels to Buenos Aires to find his long-missing older brother, a once-promising writer who is now a remnant of his former self. Bennie's discovery of his brother's near-finished play might hold the answer to understanding their shared past and renewing their bond.
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If you don't like this, we can't be friends.
Fantastic!
The acting in this movie is really good.
A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.
Not too deep but deep enough to move you in its analysis of traumatized minds. A young man arrives at his older brother's house in a faraway country. He hasn't seen his brother for many years because the latter had abandoned his family to become a writer in the sequence of some family traumas of which we become aware as the movie develops itself through a few flashbacks in colour (the rest of the movie is black and white). The re-approximation between the two brothers reveals itself very difficult, with ups and downs mainly because the elder brother, Tetro, behaves himself like rejecting his family which the younger one tries to overcome unsuccessfully. The story progresses around some writings scribbled by Tetro with a not so clear meaning which the youngest one gets hold of in secret in order to become aware of facts and situations that affected their family. But when Tetro knows this a big row breaks out between them and they severe relations totally till a later moment when after some vicissitudes the younger brother ends up by changing those writings into a theatre play which eventually wins a literary competition not without that this literary adaptation had first caused another conflict between the two brothers when Tetro knew what his brother had done. The plot ends up in an unexpected final when a surprising dramatic past situation is revealed to the younger brother in a scene of great dramatic impact. A good movie though not exceptionally good for some details would need more psychological depth and remain not so clear being presented somehow superficially from the psychological standpoint like for instance the past relationship between their father and a former Tetro's girlfriend when he still lived with his father and his younger brother wasn't yet born.
This not-particularly-involving-drama is well-cast and has a rather good script but Francis Ford Coppola has done his best work now. It doesn't help that he tries to articulate emotional episodes 'through the medium of dance' in sequences that don't measure up to the ballets already name-checked, The Red Shoes being the obvious elephant in the room.The narrative has a considerable twist towards which it can wind up. Unfortunately, the breezy manner in which the characters circle one another, combined with the coming-of-age/road trip sensibility of the film (the beautiful Maribel Verdú of car-trip flick Y Tu Mamá También overbalances the story occasionally) mean that we have as hard a time believing the reveal as the disabused principal.The wonderful Klaus Maria Brandauer is wasted. I always enjoy watching Vincent Gallo and his performance is excellent - I kept asking myself why he seemed rather more 'on the leash' than elsewhere. However, his work is also boxed ineffectively in the final showing. 4/10
17 year-old Bennie works as a waiter on a cruiseship. When the ship suffers engine difficulties and docks in Buenos Aires, he uses the opportunity to attempt to reconnect with his estranged brother Tetro, a once promising writer. He is welcomed with open arms by Tetro's girlfriend, Miranda. She longs to know the truth behind her boyfriends past and what made him the misanthrope he is today. Tetro is hostile towards his brother, his plan was to never see any of his family again, and so keeps him at arms length. Bennie discovers an incomplete play, written in code whilst his brother was undergoing psychiatric treatment. He decides to finish the play and enter it in a festival run by Argentina's most powerful critic, Alone. Faced with this upheaval, Tetro is forced to come to terms with his relationship to his younger brother and his father, a famous conductor.Tetro is, at its core, a film about family, in particular the relationship between brothers and their Father. A theme Francis Ford Coppola has immersed himself in before, most notably in The Godfather and Rumble Fish. Through a series of flashbacks we are given a glimpse of major events in Tetro's youth, his relationship with his father (played by Klaus Brandauer) and his subsequent departure. There are huge family secrets known only to Tetro and revealed to Bennie in an ending which echoes great literary and operatic works. Coppolas love of opera and theater is stamped all over the script and the city of Buenos Aires seems to be the perfect background in which to set this story.Shot stunningly in digital monochrome with colour flashbacks, it has some aesthetic similarities to Rumble Fish. Coppola and cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr. reportedly site On The Waterfront and La Notte as big influences on the films visual style. There are certainly elements of both here, with the film also retaining its visual sense of self. It is operatic in both its narrative and its mise-en-scene. The idea of cutting between colour and monochrome as well as changing aspect ratios sounds as if it would be jarring, and it typically is. But for the purposes of Tetro it works perfectly.Seen as a controversial choice by some, Vincent Gallo brings an edge to the titular character that some other actors may have lacked. However it is newcomer Alden Ehrenreich who steals the show as Bennie, a wayward teenager looking for guidance and approval. Maribel Verdu, as Miranda, provides the conduit between the two in a typicaly solid performance.Hollywood is littered with once great directors who have fallen from grace, which makes Tetro all the more remarkable as a return to form from one of the greatest, Francis Ford Coppola.
A young boy Bennie comes to Buenos Ayres to meet his older brother who ran from New York long time ago. To his surprise Bennie finds out that he is unwelcome. The present is shown in black and white but flashbacks are in colour – they are shown to us as if characters watch films of their past on a small screen, many flashbacks are superb ballet scenes. Everything goes excellently and I thought that Francis Ford Coppola made another great drama but in the last six minutes or so he managed to spoil everything with incongruent razzamatazz so all the movie began to look like a fraud. And by the way the novel they were writing judging by the fragments is crap.